Heisenberg and the German Bomb
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- Опубліковано 19 гру 2023
- Operation Epsilon: Heisenberg and the German Bomb. Farm Hall transcripts. German Uranium Project
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Videos mentioned:
Critical Mass: when the atomic bomb got real • Critical Mass: when th...
Physics of a Nuclear Explosion • Physics of a nuclear e...
Series on Nuclear Weapons Physics • Physics of Nuclear Wea...
Papers:
- The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected, M. Popp (2015) - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
- Why Hitler Did Not Have Atomic Bombs, M. Popp (2021) www.mdpi.com/2673-4362/2/1/2
- The Peculiarities of the German Uranium Project, M. Popp & de Klerk (2023) www.mdpi.com/2673-4362/4/3/40
Special thanks to:
- The Hoover Institution Archives for kindly allowing the use of the Alsos Mission Films, part of the Boris T. Pash papers
- the American Institute of Physics for permission to access and use the secret documents captured during the Alsos Mission, now part of the Samuel A. Goudsmit papers; and
- Professor Manfred Popp for internal communication and documents.
Affiliate links (may earn a commission)
The Night of the Physicists: Operation Epsilon amzn.to/483wpfZ
The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall amzn.to/41tJ4Gx
Operation Epsilon, The Farm Hall Transcripts amzn.to/472uBCA
Operation Epsilon amzn.to/476PWuD
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists amzn.to/48qrDsz
Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb amzn.to/3tq8BUq
Alsos amzn.to/3RMXz4Z
Credits:
Alsos Mission Films, Boris T. Pash papers, Film reel 1, Hoover Institution Archives • Boris T. Pash papers, ...
Alsos Mission Films, Boris T. Pash papers, Film reel 2, Hoover Institution Archives • Boris T. Pash papers, ...
Alsos Mission Films, Boris T. Pash papers, Film reel 3, Hoover Institution Archives • Boris T. Pash papers, ...
Alsos Mission Films, Boris T. Pash papers, Film reel 4, Hoover Institution Archives • Boris T. Pash papers, ...
Operation Epsilon, National Archives and Records Administration discovery.nationalarchives.go...
A portrait of LTG Leslie R. Groves by U.S. Army, public domain
Alsos team at cache of uranium by AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives
Germany map by Freepik www.freepik.com/free-vector/g...
Stern-Gerlach experiment by Theresa Knott under CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Alsos members by U.S. Army, public domain
US map by Freepik www.freepik.com/free-vector/f...
Quantum projection of S by Theresa Knott under CC BY-SA 3.0
Alsos aircraft by Mickey Thurgood, Samuel A. Goudsmit papers, 1921-1979. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics (AIP).
Semi-empirical mass formula diagram adapted from Daniel FR under CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Farm-Hall by sps1955 under CC BY 2.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Tape recorder by Cottonbro Studio on Pexels www.pexels.com/video/a-vintag...
Typewriter by KoolShooters on Pexels www.pexels.com/video/hands-ty...
BBC radio microphone by Leif Jørgensen under CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Critical mass by Fastfission, public domain
Heidelberg cyclotron, Samuel A. Goudsmit papers, 1921-1979. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics (AIP).
French cyclotron, Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris by Edal under CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Cyclotron diagram, Samuel A. Goudsmit papers, 1921-1979. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics (AIP).
Heidelberg cyclotron courtesy of Archives of the Max Planck Society, Berlin
Graphitkugel fuer Hochtemperaturreaktor by Stefan Kühn, public domain
Walther Bothe portrait courtesy of Archives of the Max Planck Society, Berlin
Haigerloch reactor replica by ArtMechanic under CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Baseball card of Morris "Moe" Berg by Goudey, public domain
The Catcher Was a Spy poster by Animus Films/PalmStar Media/Serena Films/Windy Hill Productions
Heisenberg papers by Springer Berlin
Kosmische Strahlung cover by Springer Berlin
Particle cascade by Theturnipmaster under CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Albert Speer by the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) under CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Deed creativecommons.org/licenses/...
This video was sponsored by Brilliant - Наука та технологія
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It's hard to under-state the extremely high quality of these videos by Dr Jorge. They're as good as any books I've read on this subject yet reduced to 20 minutes of superb content. I've learned so much by watching his series of videos on this subject, and while the math is sometimes a bit beyond me, I understand his conclusions and how he reached them. Fabulous stuff.
thanks for the appreciation of the work that went into making this video: there was a lot of reading, writing, and rewriting plus reaching out to many researchers and official institutions to get formal permission to use the material presented.
These videos are great! I'm a German physicist with significant interest in history and while most stuff on this platform is a let down this channel always delivers! It really comes through that you understand how physics research is done when you evaluate and weight the evidence. It's also so refreshing that you clearly understand the physics and want to make that accessible as well. If you're going to stick with the nuclear subject, are you interested in making a video about the famous death toll of Hiroshima question? It's one of those subjects that many people are interested in, but I find most coverage to be lacking in nuance and understanding of the difficult evidentiary base for the relevant radio-biological models.
thanks for the comment, it really makes the effort worth it when people appreciate the work behind each video. As I mentioned in another comment, there is a lot of research behind this 23-min video; and many back-and-forth emails with researchers and official institutions to get formal permission to use the material presented.
What a great video, the facts and the truth is insane, a lot of people think that the Germans were developing a bomb but the reality is way different, i have to admit even i didnt know about this, what a great history lesson, thanks for the great video keep the great work up!
thank, I am glad the history lesson is appreciated, there is a lot of research behind this 23-mon video; and many back-and-forth emails with researchers and official institutions to get formal permission to use the material presented.
I truly love your videos, working through my physics class right now and everything here has motivated me to actually do my homework. Reading A History of the Atomic Bomb as well, and all of your videos just combine those two subjects in a way that scratches the itch I never knew I had. Combine that with the amazing research you do, and I hope you'll keep putting out these videos for as long as you feel able! Probably some of the best on this topic I've ever watched on UA-cam.
wow, serving as motivation for doing homework has never occurred to me but I am glad I can serve as an extra motivation push. Thanks for your comment, it really makes the effort worth it when people appreciate the work behind each video. What physics class are you working on?
Veery nice! I wish these videos were around when I was in grad school! 🙂 Now I am reading over my old notes on S-matrix theory via the Propagator. I love it! keep them coming.
Glad it was helpful! After I took quantum field theory in grad school, I asked if I could attend the lectures the next year... and then I did it again so technically I had 6 semester of QFT but I still feel that I only scratched its surface, what a fascinating but also brain-melting topic
Wow! 6 semesters! I worked with a gravity group. I only had 2 semesters QFT@@jkzero
Great video! Unfortunately, this topic is often only ever dealt with by leaning into one sensationalistic extreme (Heisenberg purposely sabotaged the effort) or the other (Goudsmit and von Schirach). You present a very grounded version of this part of history, and it's the only one that really makes sense when looking at the evidence. Again, well done.
I guess we want to believe that our heroes are really that, at least I believed that being a Heisenberg fan, plus he is my Ururgroßvater. People want to see him has a villain or a hero, but in reality it appears to be that he (and most of the members of the Uranverein) just didn't care enough or found themselves in such a comfort zone that doing the work would just risk it all. I really recommend the paper by Popp and de Klerk.
What? Your accent sounds Swedish, your name sounds Spanish, you live in Germany and Heisenberg was your Greatgreatgrandfather?
How does all of that square up??? 😮
I forgot a quite relevant word in my response above, I meant to say that "Heisenberg is my Ururgroßdoktorvater," minor but significant difference. The PhD advisor of my PhD advisor was student of Rudolf Peierls, who was student of Heisenberg. First time that my accent is classified as Swedish but I am sure Americans spot the Spanish right away. To square everything up: I come originally from Chile, got my Ph.D. in the US, moved to Germany for my postdoc, and stayed after transitioning to industry.
Bro, you don’t sound Spanish to me AT ALL… I could see Skandinavian or maybe Dutch, but not Spanish. Very Interesting.
Thanks for another excellent video.
Was away from this channel while on Christmas vacation. So definitely a treat to find two new videos. An excellent discussion of German physicists and the A-Bomb. Very thorough very convincing. The Americans clearly saw the industrial scale that would be required to produce the bomb particularly in purifying uranium and producing plutonium. And the US obviously had the resources required to build the neccesary infrastructure. Thinking about early mistakes and miscalculations on critical mass, America scientists made a lot of similar mistakes early on ( i recall one physicist first calculating critical mass at several tons of U-238. And was shocked when refining it was proposed)But i think the American approach of centralizing research and concentrating scientists would facilitate cooperation and communication--or what used to be called " water cooler talk" provided a much more efficient environment for solving problems.
I am glad you enjoyed the binge-watching session
The United States not only had the necessary infrastructure, or could easily build it, the U.S. was the only country that wasn't being bombed.
Also, it shouldn't be surprising that the Germans spent so much time and effort working on nuclear reactors. The first step in the U.S. bomb research was constructing the reactor in Chicago. That one worked, but given that the Americans decided to try every possible way to make the bomb, if that first reactor hadn't worked the scientists would have moved onto something else until something did work. The Germans, after failing with their first reactor since they were using heavy water, then kept trying also. They just never got anything that worked.
Absolutely fascinating! thank you.
What a master class! I truely love the high quality of your work.
Thanks for your comment, it really makes the effort worth it when people appreciate the work behind each video.
One new info that I got from your videos so far is that these early nuclear pioneers seem to underestimate the viability of Uranium enrichment. Interesting...
The only reason this isn't mainstream is beacuse it's a niche type of content, the whole nuclear stuff, i would recommend tryong to review scientific accuracies on nuclear showcase in series and movies, like the Chernobyl movie and the many ww2 movies out there.
Btw amazing content, extremely well researched
Thanks for the support and recommendation to grow. I believe I have enough original material for now to continue; I have done my best to avoid falling for the easy path of reviewing the material of others. I have noticed this trend in which good channels end up publishing reaction videos to films, memes, and commenting the videos of other youtubers. I really don't want to do that, I will do what I can to continue to grow. Comments, sharing, and liking help supporting the channel.
@@jkzero thanks for the response, it's great that you are focused on doing original comment, hadn't thought about it through this perspective, hoping to see your growth, the quality is otherworldly
@@Embless-id5od again, thanks for the support and happy to have you in the channel
i’m really glad i’ve stumbled on such a high quality channel, i’ve been struggling to find good small channels due to AI Content Farming making most videos minimal garbage
Thanks, I am glad you liked the content in the channel. As you say, the signal-to-noise ratio is low these times and making this type of videos is a slow and time-consuming process so thanks for appreciating it.
Hello Dr Diaz, please keep making these videos!-I am hoping you will do an in-depth video on the Plank-Fokker equation and how even the neutron diffusion equation is a version of Plank-Fokker, as is brownian motion and entropy in statistical mechanics-thank you because modern books are all difficult to understand-george
I am glad you liked the videos. I cannot guarantee to be able to fulfill all the requests but I always open to collecting suggestions, thanks.
Underrated channel
Thanks for the endorsement; I wish I could get to wider audiences but the UA-cam algorithm is driven by engagement so you can actively help the channel by liking, subscribing, and sharing. This type of support is highly appreciated so I can continue making videos.
I wonder just how influential the Hungarian physicists' position was in deciding the outcome (I remember von Neumann, Szilard, and Teller having contributed to the Manhattan project).
Nice presentation! I'm quite convinced that the presented estimation by a random walk does not account for 3-dimensionality of space. So the estimate with a corrected formula should result in a shorter distance.
the mean-square end-to-end distance in a random walk is always lambda*sqrt(N), in 1D, 2D or 3D. How do you think a 3D treatment would modify Heisenberg's estimate?
@@jkzero Thank you for writing. In that case likely no modification of the estimate. Yes, in a very high dimensional space, in which we choose with every step a different (to the already choosen) orthogonal direction we obvious get with constant steps of size lambda, lambda*sqrt(N). Which speaks for your statement. I can not yet calculate it for 3 dimensions and a Poisson-distributed of mean step-size lambda with random directions. One shortcoming of the random walk argument seems to now, that with every reaction (i.e. step) the newly created neutrons are start making their own random walks and many stay in the volume (to be calculated) or will create descendants, which will stay in.
This question has been debated over and over since the war, but I think the secret recordings make it clear their effort was not about making a bomb but a power generating reactor. That Heisenberg thought more than 10T was needed meant he had not worked out the critical mass and the fact that once aware of the bomb was able to calculate the CM in just a few days must have been embarrassing that he'd missed this. I have to believe that the expectation that 100,000 Calutrons would be needed ended any pursuit right then and there as that was not even remotely possible in war time Germany given Allied bombing and the extraordinary cost of such a factory. Indeed, the fact that they did not believe the bomb had been used and that, instead, some vast conventional bomb must have been used makes it clear they could not imagine it possible. They were not alone, even Einstein thought it impossible...
you are totally right, in fact, on the famous Einstein-Szilard letter to President Roosevelt they describe the delivery of the bomb by ship, which shows that the idea of a gigantic bomb was in their minds
Done❤
How do you calculate what level of enrichment is necessary for a bomb?
I do not know how Müller addressed this problem working for Heisenberg but I did a calculation in which you set the amount of enrichment to be a variable, call it f (for the fraction of U235 in a generic lump of uranium of unknown enrichment f) and calculate a general expression for the effective neutron reproduction called k, which must be k>1 for a self-sustained chain reaction. Then just make a plot of k vs. f using the measured values of cross-sections and secondary neutrons produced by fission and capture in U235 and U238 (we can ignore U234). All the details, calculation, and plots are in the video "Nuclear Bomb vs. Nuclear Reactor" ua-cam.com/video/S-uMUq939dY/v-deo.html
uiii 90th, I'm really glad youtube stopped showing me only mainstream videos
glad the mighty algorithm brought you here, welcome to the channel!
Of course we don't really know what was going on in Heisenberg's head.
you are totally right, we can only infer based in some unreliable sources. My interpretation from his calculations are clear: during the war Heisenberg didn't know how to calculate the critical mass; whether this was for moral reasons is unclear, but at least he didn't have to think about that.
I thought german nuclear project had lack of funding... but i'm surprised it was because they just gave up
some historians keep debating which one was first... the chicken or the egg... the funding for the bomb program or just giving up. Given the evidence that I have read, it appears that the German scientists were in a comfortable situation by not promising a weapon that had no possibility to be completed during the war. The moral aspect appears to have been secondary.
What do we know about Japan's nuclear program during WWII?
I personally know little about the Japanese nuclear-weapons program. I know that Yoshio Nishina was at the forefront of atomic research at the time and under his leadership nuclear research took place but I know not much more. Nishina introduced quantum physics into Japanese classrooms in the same way as Oppenheimer did it in the US.
Computing the critical mass assuming sheets of uranium (rather than in imploding sphere of uranium) is just dumb engineering - but Heisenberg was a theoretical physicist, NOT an engineer...
So yes the fashi where good engineers but bad sciencetist
They were great scientists - that's why you know their names. I think it shows how that kind of political system makes following new ideas difficult if not impossible. They couldn't cooperate with each other fully because of the security state and resources were always being diverted to the leader's latest obsession - one that he could understand and fitted in with his emotions and preconceptions.
I don't know if they can be called particularly good engineers if you look at what their factories pumped out.
8:18 Wait now he feels guilt and not when he was working for the Nazis?
I would guess that, after what is discussed in the later part of the video, Hahn saw his efforts during his involvement in the Uranium Club just as pure reactor research, it was never a bomb program
@@jkzero It's kinda odd that he can compartmentalize it like that while his colleagues were fleeing the Nazis, I mean he even tried to recruit Bohr and that resulted in Bohr fleeing.
@@hedgehog3180 you are probably right, I think we spend time trying to justify our heroes, I had that issue for years with Heisenberg